Ma'yan Tikvah's Divrei Earth

Monday, December 11, 2017

To kindle the Hanukkah lights, we need
the shamash, the helper
candle, with which we light all the other candles. The role of the
shamash is vital,
enabling as it does the proliferation of physical and spiritual light
we experience on Hanukkah. Through the following kavannot,
or meditations, the shamash
can also help us make connections to the Earth within the context of
Hanukkah and give us the strength we need to take action. Each
meditation is connected to both a prayer or text from Jewish
tradition and one or more of the Dragons
of Inaction, spiritual and psychological barriers that prevent us
from taking the actions we must take if we want to help preserve a
climate suitable for life.

For Lighting the Shamash
Each Night:

As I light this
shamash, may the light I behold help me to see more clearly and more deeply into my heart and soul and into the world beyond me. May the light of this
candle remind me to connect to the Earth, Jewish tradition, family,
and community in ways that give me spiritual, physical, and
psychological healing and strength. May the light of the shamash
renew my will to learn more about climate change and Judaism, the
connections between the two, and potential personal and communal
actions.

First Night

May
the light of this candle inspire me to reduce the carbon footprint of
my energy usage by buying my electricity from
renewable resources; putting solar panels on my roof; and
installing a heat pump. May I find the strength to overcome the
dragon of concern about the financial risk of any investment
required. May I hear a voice within me telling me to be “strong and
of good courage.” (Deuteronomy 31:7)

Second Night

May the light of
these candles motivate me to move closer to a plant-based diet by
reducing the amount of meat I eat and cutting down on dairy products.
May my journey through diet change not be thwarted by the dragon of
my desire to justify my comfortable climate-negative lifestyle. With
each bite of food I take, may I understand that “the Earth belongs
to the Holy One, and everything in it.” (Psalm 24:1)

Third Night

May
the light of these candles bring me the strength to reduce my
transportation carbon footprint by walking, bicycling, and carpooling
more, taking public transportation more often, getting rid of one or
more cars, flying less, and/or buying an electric car. May I not
allow the dragon of perceived inequity, my desire not to be taken
advantage of, and my belief that others may not reduce their
carbon footprint to prevent me from taking these actions. May I
remember that my actions have consequences and follow the path of
goodness and sacred connection. (Second paragraph of the Shema,
Deuteronomy 11:13-21 and other passages)

Fourth Night

May the light of
these candles move me to divest all my financial holdings from fossil
fuel companies and reinvest them in renewable energy. May the dragon
of my lack of knowledge of how and where to reinvest my funds not
prevent me from making this shift. May I take to heart the gifts of
wisdom, knowledge, and understanding that are continually bestowed
upon me every day. (Daily Amidah)

Fifth Night

May
the light of these candles prompt me to write, call, and visit my
state and local representatives and urge them to support clean
energy and carbon
pricing bills, not once, but again and again. May I not
get bogged down by the dragon of belief that my voice doesn't matter
and that nothing will result from my actions. May I understand in my
heart that one who can prevent her household, city, or the whole
world from committing a sin and doesn't do it is responsible for
their sins. (Babylonian Talmud Shabbat 54b)

Sixth Night

May the light of
these candles convince me to care for my property in a way that will
produce more food and sequester more carbon. And if I do not own any
land, may I search out a place within my community where I can act
upon this matter. May the dragons of worrying that everything I do
will take too much time and feel meaningless not cause me to hesitate
and refrain from acting. May I remember that my human role on this
planet is “to till and to tend” or “to serve and protect” the
Earth. (Genesis 2:15)

Seventh Night

May the light of
these candles propel me to reduce the amount of water I use and the
amount of waste I produce by composting, recycling, reusing, buying
only what I truly need, installing a rain barrel, and reducing indoor
and outdoor water use. May I not stagnate in my climate activism
journey due to the dragon of believing that the easiest actions are
the only ones I need to take. May I remember that G!d “gives
strength to the weary” each and every day. (Morning Blessings)

Eighth Night

May
the light of these candles inspire me to regularly support
eco-justice efforts by giving tzedakah
and advocating in my local and state governments. May I not allow the
dragon of concern about the importance of my efforts to prevent me
from acting. May I remember that my actions impact
the lives of vulnerable populations now and in the future, and that
one who saves a single life, it is as though he has saved the entire
world. (Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 37a)

Wednesday, September 20, 2017

by Rabbi Katy Allenphotos by Gabi MezgerAs you journey through these the Yamim Noraim, Days of Awe, may you find yourself more able to remain present in the moment, may you find meaning in unexpected places, and my your heart open ever wider.May you search among the needles for the gifts of seeds.

May you find beauty among that which at first glance seems no longer needed, but which in fact is vital.

May your gaze turn upward toward vistas without end.

May you notice gifts that pop up quickly in unexpected places.

May your eyes and your heart be opened to wonder.

May subtlness strike you as sacred.

May stark contrasts awaken you to unexpected treasures.

\May you greet everyone with a smile.

May you emerge in places where nourishment is unexpected.

May you remain calm in the face of stress and pain.

May you have a good year.May you find ways to connect with, engage with, and appreciate this amazing planet.May you find ways to protect, preserve, and honor this amazing planet.May we all rejoice in the blessings of Creation.Shana tova,Rabbi Katy and GabiRabbi Katy Allen is the founder and rabbi of Ma'yan Tikvah - A Wellspring of Hope, which holds services outdoors all year long, and the co-founder and President pro-tem of the Boston-based Jewish Climate Action Network. She is a board certified chaplain and serves as an Eco-Chaplain and the Facilitator of One Earth Collaborative, a program of Open Spirit, and is a former hospital and hospice chaplain. She received her ordination from the Academy for Jewish Religion in Yonkers, NY in 2005 and lives in Wayland, MA, with her spouse, Gabi Mezger, who leads the singing at Ma'yan Tikvah.

that years from now, after this weeding and reselecting of
the seeds of your soul

you will not need any new seed — for she will become
again

your natural cropping

blooming time and time again each season,

already harvested,

already sewn,

in to the sleeve of your soul

coming home

becoming whole.

amen.

Molly Bajgot is a Jewish signer-songwriter currently living in Western Massachusetts. She is a lover of music, healing
arts, and the outdoors. When she gets the chance to do these things together,
she feels as home. Being in the garden is a place of mystery and metaphor for
her. She loves to craft ritual, and to be in community both as a member and as
an organizer. She looks forward to molding all these passions together in to a
career throughout her life.

Monday, September 18, 2017

I have a picture of my mother Helene with Heidi Klum, the
blonde supermodel and TV star. We were in Heidi’s trailer on the Warner Bros
lot in Burbank
watching her prep for a commercial shoot. Heidi and her makeup entourage
gathered around my mother who was wearing her “Kiss Me I’m 100” T-shirt. They
wanted to know her secret to aging well. My mom laughed and told Heidi about
the gin-soaked raisins she eats every morning to ward off arthritis. Then she
talked about the raw apple cider vinegar she takes before every meal to
overcome gas. And the walnuts and blueberries and probiotics. The classes and
crossword puzzles. How she plays bridge and Scrabble. And how she set a world
record in swimming when she turned 90 years old.

My mom has lived a life of service, from the Campfire Girls
to the National Council of Jewish Women. She tutored Russian immigrants in
English as a second language. In 1974, at great risk to herself, she smuggled
letters and money to Russian Refusenik Jews in the Soviet Russia. In the middle
of the night, she managed to avoid the KGB and find their homes. She met with
the scientist Alexander Lerner and also a young Natan Sharansky before he was
imprisoned. At one of the apartments she visited, she was asked if she could
speak Yiddish to an elderly Russian woman who had not heard the language in
years. My mother agreed and they woke the woman up. She was thrilled as my
mother asked her where she was from and why she came to Russia in
Yiddish.

On left, Helene Iberall with Heidi Klum; on right, Helene with Natan Sharansky when they remet in 2013

My mom died at the age of 102 at personal peace, but not at
peace because of the world. To her, the only life worth living is one steeped
in community and family. "Prejudice is the worst thing in this
world," she told me. Her mantra was, "Dwell on human kindness."
As an Orthodox Jew, this was what Judaism meant to her. She said it to the
young and the old, to everyone she met. She also told them about her secret of
aging well: about the gin-soaked raisins, the raw apple cider vinegar.
About being with the Earth, not against it. And she lived her teshuvah by
asking the same question each day of her life, a question from a Thomas
Carlyle poem that she had memorized in the 4th grade: So
here hath been dawning another blue day. Think wilt thou let it slip useless
away?

Photo by Penni Rubin

Thea Iberall is on the leadership team of the Jewish Climate Action Network. As head of the JCAN interfaith group, she works with other organizations such as the Green Sanctuary Committee of the First Parish UU Church Medfield, Massachusetts Interfaith Power & Light, and 350MA.org. Dr. Iberall is the author of The Swallow and the Nightingale. In this visionary fiction novel, she uses today’s world of climate change as a backdrop to help awaken people, reminding us that the visions of Gandhi, religious mysticism, and Native Americans are a more sustainable solution than the patriarchal system under which we live. Learn more at www.theaiberall.com.

Sunday, September 17, 2017

On a recent vacation to my home town of Toronto, as I drove
around the countryside and saw the many places I knew so well from my childhood,
I reflected again on how the landscape in which I lived affected who I am and
how I see the world. I was born in Toronto
which is in an area that was covered by glaciers over 10,000 years ago and the
land still is shaped by that ancient event: spoon shaped hills called drumlins,
ridges called eskers which are the remains of the river beds that flowed from
the retreating ice. And lakes: I spent many of my summers at camp in Northern
Ontario beyond the glacial till where the major geological feature is the
Canadian Shield which has some of the oldest rock in the world: more than 3.96
billion years old and which covers some 5,000,000 square miles of Canada and
the U.S. In Ontario,
the glaciers carved out more than 250,000 lakes from the Shield and many of my
summers were spent in the rock, water and forest of that landscape. In this
world, I had some of my deepest and most important spiritual experiences that
remain with me still.

When I moved to New
Jersey over 20 years ago I became part of a new
geological area: the Piedmont province formed of volcanic basalt over 200
million years ago. And now I live in Pennsylvania
where I am in a different kind of geological formation: rolling hills and
valleys of metamorphic rock formed during the Precambrian period some one
billion years ago.

What does all this mean for me? The food that I ate and
which formed me, was grown in the glacial soil of Southern Ontario is still, so
to speak, bred in my bones. How did this land also affect my mental perspective
on the world? I thought of these things as I saw the familiar ridge of the
Niagara Escarpment over which the mighty Niagara
Falls fell. For the first time in my life I took the
boat that brought me close to those falls. I felt the spray and saw the wonder
of those thundering waters.

In this month of Elul when we are supposed to take stock (heshbon
ha-nefesh) of our lives and actions from the past year, I believe that we
should also think about the places where we were formed and where we now live. Forgetting
these landscapes is a kind of sin. We must remember the rocks, the soils, the
water, the flora and the fauna and what they imparted and continue to impart to
our lives in real concrete ways. Each one is different; each one has special
qualities that we are mostly not conscious of. So as part of our spiritual
accounting we should try to bring these places out of our unconsciousness into
our consciousness. Maybe this process will teach us to understand how we are of
the earth.

Our tradition often tries to symbolically connect us with
the land of Israel which provides a foundation for
our identities as Jews. Collectively, it is the land which formed us as a
people and where we still live in our collective memory. But each of us also
has a place and a foundation from which we came, an actual place where the
minerals of the soil, the water we drink and the air we breathe has given shape
to our flesh. Let us not forget these places. Let us remember and, ask for
forgiveness for the sin of forgetting that place from which we came and to
which we will go.

Rabbi Lawrence Troster is the rabbi of Kesher Israel
Congregation in West Chester, Pennsylvania
and is the Rabbi-in-Residence at the Thomas Berry Forum for Ecological Dialogue
at IonaCollege
in New Rochelle,
New York.

Saturday, September 16, 2017

In the Torah, three things are called "shabbat
shabbaton" – the seventh day, Yom Kippur, and Shmitah (the Sabbatical
year).

Agnon, in his book The Days of Awe, shares a teaching form Rabbi Tzvi Hakohen
of Rymanov about this. The rabbi was asked, if both Yom Kippur and the Sabbath
itself are called "shabbat shabbaton", how is Yom Kippur more
special? And he answered, the seventh day is called "shabbat shabbaton
l’adonai" – a sabbath of sabbaths for God. Yom Kippur is called "shabbat
shabbaton lakhem" – a sabbath of sabbaths for all of you. On Yom
Kippur we don't just reach toward the divine realm, we draw it into ourselves.

When Rabbi Michael Bernstein shared this teaching with me, he added: "By
that logic, Shmitah, which is called “shabbat shabbaton la'aretz”, a
sabbath of sabbaths for the land (Lev 25:4), draws that holiness into the land.
In this way, Shmitah is even more akin to Yom Kippur than it is to Shabbat."

There's a midrash that can explain this idea. The essence of the Shekhinah, the
divine presence, was originally in the land, in the Earth. When Adam and Eve
ate the fruit, breaking God's command and sinning against the tree, the
Shekhinah fled away from the Earth to the first heaven. With each successive
generation, the Shekhinah fled further, until she was seven heavens away from
the Earth. Then Abraham and Sarah came and drew her down to the sixth heaven,
and Isaac and Rebekah drew her even closer, to the fifth heaven, each successive
generation bringing the Shekhinah down, until Moses finally brought her
"from above to below". (Genesis Rabbah 19:7)

But Yosef Gikatilla, the 13th century Spanish Kabbalist, explained that this
didn’t complete the process: "Moshe our teacher came and all Israel
with him and they made the mishkan/Tabernacle and its vessels. And they
repaired the ruined channels, and…they drew living water. And they made the
Shekhinah return to dwell /l’shakhen among the creatures below, in the
tent – but not in the ground /baqarqa, not in the Earth itself, as she
was in the beginning of the Creation."

This is what it means when God says to Moses, “Make me a sanctuary and I will
dwell among/within them / v’shakhanti b’tokham” (Ex 25:8): God said that
the Shekhinah would “dwell in them”, but not (yet) in the Earth. There was one
more step to go.

The Shmitah year, when we are commanded to rest the land and to rest along with
the land, when we share food and land not only with the poor and the stranger
but also with the wild animals, bridges that last step. Shmitah is a shabbat
shabbaton "la'aretz", not just "lakhem".

Shmitah infuses Shekhinah into the Earth itself. Of course, the Earth is
already filled with Shekhinah. If we have inured ourselves to that, Shmitah can
open our hearts. But first we need to make Shekhinah dwell within us, so that
our hearts can meet the world "ba'asher hu sham", at the level
of holiness that is already there. That's what Yom Kippur
does.

Sabbath, Yom Kippur, and Shmitah represent progressive stages of bringing kedushah/holiness
and Shekhinah into this world, from God, to us, to the Earth itself. May we
accomplish this goal.

Rabbi David Seidenberg is the creator of neohasid.org and the author of Kabbalah and
Ecology: God's Image in the More-Than-Human World (Cambridge, 2015), now in paperback. He lives
in NorthamptonMA.

Friday, September 15, 2017

I lost a lot of azalea bushes this past winter. The space
looks stark and bare, and I am deciding what to place there to fill that void
that a harsh Boston
winter destroyed in my garden. The weight of the snowfall broke branches. I was
at first very upset looking at the spot where azaleas once flourished in the
springtime, and angry that the snow’s destructive force did this when I was not
home for two months (to brush them off and relieve the pressure of the snow’s weight).
I used a combination of practices from Mussar (using the soul-trait equanimity)
and Buddhist mindfulness to focus on a solution and not just to over react to a
natural occurrence. I am replanting there to restore that space with color and
perhaps a new bush.

Hands for working in the earth and in being open to blessings.

Likewise with teshuvah, I am growing to accept that when I
do not turn in the right direction towards the good and compassionate response that
both Mussar and mindfulness offer, I create a destructive space that will
require attention and effort to fill in the negative areas.

Teshuvah is not a one-time action to elicit change during
the high holidays; rather, it involves an awareness throughout the year for a
conscious approach to living a more satisfying life with good intentions and
purpose. Just as we can perform some actions to prevent harsh outcomes in our
gardens and in the natural world around us, so we must also add preventive
efforts to develop healthful habits and everyday awareness to achieve the
“higher self.”

Which way are you turning this year?? This bird of paradise shows us one way, towards the sun.

I am learning to respond to frustration and adversity with a
little more care and balance consistent with the guidelines and dictates of
spiritual practices. The process begins within me and then expands out to
others as I focus on traits that require much discipline in order to integrate
them within me. Moving from the cognitive understanding of what we experience
and what we can know is vastly different from regularly and mindfully using our
time to reflect and internalize the learning.

I have seen Mussar students who take course after course and
still show signs of great reactivity and insensitivity, whereas there are neophytes
who can more easily take in the nourishment that these practices provide, digest
them and change to more healthful living. You can take endless spiritual courses but if you don’t use it then it
limits your growing and ability to change.

Rabbi Soloveitchik asserts that “Judaism has always held
that it lies within man’s power to renew himself. In this task, man must rely
upon himself; no one can help him…he is his own redeemer.” Conversely, quoting
Deuteronomy, "we are called upon to open our hearts and return to God even
as we acknowledge that for every turning, we need God’s help…we encounter both
the transforming grace of God and an urgent call to repentance.”

I choose to subscribe more to the former rabbinical opinion
rather than the biblical dictate.I
believe that through extensive human effort, inspirational spiritual centering,
conscious discipline and setting a daily intention, people can and do change
and transform themselves in small and often large ways.

Maxine Lyons is becoming more and more of an avid gardner, both
in the summer months outdoors and in her home (a year round sanctuary for many
succulents and cacti to flourish). She is exploring the wonderful resonances
between Mussar and Buddhist mindfulness
practices while she enjoys some of her time in spiritual accompaniment with
local individuals seeking homes.

by Rabbi Katy Z. Allen I teach a class called Loss & Transformation: Connecting Sacred Texts to Family Stories to Help Deal with Lo...

Ma'yan Tikvah - A Wellspring of Hope

Ma'yan Tikvah is a congregation without walls in Wayland, MA, that holds services outdoors year round. It is a place of hope and trust for those seeking a meaningful connection to Judaism through study, prayer, experiences of nature, care of the environment, and social justice. Founded and guided by Rabbi Katy Z. Allen, Ma'yan Tikvah provides a place to explore Judaism in an informal and inclusive setting.